Fairytales
by verity candor
Summary: They're all just stories.
1. Snow White

**Snow White**

Severus Snape first heard the story of Snow White when he was ten years, seven-and-a-bit months, and thirteen days old, and sitting in a lovely green glade overshadowed by trees and sparkling with dew where a red-haired princess (beautiful in the way some children are, with promise and hope combined with genetic chance) told him, eyes sparkling, of a wondrous world where a poor, beautiful girl, hated by her stepmother, but kind and gentle nevertheless, ran away to the woods, and lived happily ever after _(and I mean, really really, Severus,) _with her prince.

Even then, he knew it was ridiculous.

_In the real story, the prince doesn't kiss Snow White back to life._

_In the real story, nothing can raise the dead._

_In the real story –_

_He's always too late, with nothing to do but mourn, not even given the privilege of seeing her face through a glass coffin because she's beneath the ground and she _rots_._


	2. The Little Mermaid

**The Little Mermaid**

They were six beautiful children... [and] All day long they played in the great halls of the castle, or among the living flowers that grew out of the walls.

_Wait, wait, I'm not there yet! _

_Oh look at poor Regulus! Narcissa cried harshly. She was furthest ahead, speeding towards the playroom where Andi crouched, giggling._

_Can't you catch up with us, Regulus? You're so slow! Sirius cackled over his shoulder, still running._

_Poor ickle Reggie can't even play tag, because he's a little bitty baby! Haha! Bellatrix vanished around the corner, leaving him struggling up the corridor alone._

..."When you have reached your fifteenth year," said the grand-mother, "you will have permission to rise up out of the sea, to sit on the rocks in the moonlight, while the great ships are sailing by; and then you will see both forests and towns."

...None of them longed so much for her turn to come as the youngest, she who had the longest time to wait...

_Regulus stared in awe as Bellatrix shook up her sleeve with a quick motion. _

_He has chosen me! She said, displaying the Dark Mark to the gathering, eyes glinting wildly. I've become his!_

_He reached out to run his fingers around it, tracing the mesmerising path of the snake's head as it wove side-to-side._

_Bellatrix smirked at his fascination, _

_Oh look, little baby Regulus wants his turn too, does he?_

_She laughed at the eagerness in his eyes._

_Never fear, Reggie darling... She said mockingly. He'll be wanting you too soon enough._

"Well, now, you are grown up," said the old dowager, her grandmother; "so you must let me adorn you like your other sisters;" and she placed a wreath of white lilies in her hair, and every flower leaf was half a pearl. Then the old lady ordered eight great oysters to attach themselves to the tail of the princess to show her high rank.

"But they hurt me so," said the little mermaid.

"Pride must suffer pain," replied the old lady.

_Regulus almost screamed, biting his lip until he felt the slight copper of blood on his tongue._

_Twenty masked faces, forty eerie eyes, peered at him, like the eyes of coiled serpents, waiting for the ritual to finish. _

_And -_

"Why have not we an immortal soul?"

_Black as an indelible ink stain against his wrist is the Dark Mark._

_You have done us proud. Came Bellatrix's voice, floating on the air with a faint whiff of her perfume as the twenty Faithful passed around him. He clutched his arm, rumpling the sleeve of his best robes, covering the Mark with his palm._

The little mermaid ... saw her sisters rising out of the flood: "We have given our hair to the witch," said they, "to obtain help for you, that you may not die to-night. She has given us a knife: here it is, see it is very sharp.

Before the sun rises you must plunge it into the heart of the prince;"

_Do it, Regulus. Do it! He can hear her harpy cry behind him, but they are already in disarray. The Order is coming and the witnesses must die if they are to survive. He is face to face with a sobbing moaning woman, only a few years older than he is._

_Spare me...spare me... don't... please..._

_Do it - do it! It is not only her voice now, others begin to say it. And then there is the woman's face, round, and plain, and sobbing to him._

_Bella begins to push past him, If you are too weak- but Lucius stops her and she hisses in displeasure. _

_Let him do it. He must._

_And the face in front of him. _

_Please...please..._

...the knife trembled in the hand of the little mermaid: then she flung it far away from her into the waves; the water turned red where it fell, and the drops that spurted up looked like blood.

_Just two words. Two words, the slight whoosh of air, a green burst of light. Silence._

She could not forget the charming prince -

_And her face. In his dreams, his nightmares, every time pleading over and over and over. _

_Please...please...spare me..._

_He couldn't look at any of them without shuddering anymore, and -Sweet Circe- everywhere, that awful face, pleading, pleading - for mercy._

_He wishes- if he could go back- fix it - maybe..._

"Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?"

_Kreacher, Kreacher, tell me, tell me now. He says to the elf rocking back and forth on its knees, moaning in pain._

_As...Master...commands... it says, groaning as it begins. And as the tale unfolds Regulus feels the twisting worm of shame within him grow larger, enveloping his innards in disgust. Horcruxes, barely a word to be spoken in the dead of night... it has to end. He thinks. He thinks... of her face, hiding sharp-fanged behind his eyes._

"I will do it," said the little mermaid, and she became pale as death.

_And so he goes._

She saw that each held in its grasp something it had seized with its numerous little arms ... The white skeletons of human beings who had perished at sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, ... even a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled; and this seemed the most shocking of all to the little princess.

_Inferi..._

_Inferi..._

_He shivered. It wasn't yet too late - his brother. For a split second he seized upon it - but it was too late already, since he had entered, since he had decided, to come, since he had heard Kreacher's story - since before then (that face); it had been too late._

"I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it ... and you will feel great pain."

_The wavering green light shone upon his face... he understood almost at once._

_He had to drink it, didn't he?_

...it seemed as if a two-edged sword went through her delicate body.

_I hate you..._

_Do it..._

_Weak... _

_please... no... please..._

_No! No! Please!_

_Master must! Master must, Master has commanded Kreacher, Master must drink-_

_weak..._

_spare me..._

_weak..._

_never forgive you..._

_weak..._

...it eased her ... to bathe ... in the cold sea-water...

_Water, water...please... water._

The little mermaid leaned her white arms on the edge of the vessel, and looked ... for that first ray of dawn that would bring her death.

_And then the cold hands, the wet, clammy hands reaching out to pull him in into the deep dark of the water..._

"But if you take away my voice," said the little mermaid, "what is left for me?"

_He tries to scream... to let himself be heard, to get away, onto land-_

_please...please...spare me..._

_He doesn't - want - to die..._

"...We have not immortal souls, we shall never live again... like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more..."

_He can see the ghostly green glow still-_

"So I shall die," said the little mermaid, "and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun.

_But even this, he knows, isn't enough... _

"-to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars."

_spare me..._

"I know what you want," said the sea witch; "it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess...

_He doesn't want..._

...she thought of the prince and the immortal soul.

_those, horrible white hands... he doesn't want- to die..._

The little mermaid lifted her glorified eyes towards the sun...

_-the light fades-_

"You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing; you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds;"

_oh, please-_

and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul."

_Ohh... Merlin..._

Unseen she kissed the forehead of the bride, and fanned the prince, and then mounted with the other children of the air to a rosy cloud that floated through the aether...

_So... dark... no air..._

"If human beings are not drowned," asked the little mermaid, "can they live forever? Do they never die as we do here in the sea?"

_please..._

_..._

_a pale white hand struggles towards the surface..._

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above.


	3. Peter Pan

**Peter Pan**

Naturally, it's not something you would generally read a great deal into – and so Sirius tosses it next to his pillow and forgets to return it to Grunhilda Pottage or what have you, and resumes the spin-spinning whirlwind of his life.

And then he notices – slowly – what's gone wrong.

And it's not pleasant – not in the least – when he realizes how long it's been since he's heard _ProngsandPadfoot, _and how often he's hearing _ProngsandLily _(which sounds stupid) or _JamesandLily_ (which is worse).

Suddenly it's him, by himself, and everyone else crowding around the two of them as if – as if – they're Ares and Aphro-fucking-dite, and he hates that, hates feeling like he's being _usurped._

This is the time - after he's started skiving classes and skipping meals - when he finds the book again, when he flips through the pages, and this time _pays attention _with his curious, sucking intelligence – and suddenly it's all over the place, the words are dancing off the pages and into his life (and he suddenly starts and never stops seeing Wendy with red hair).

And this is when he starts stealing the words, shoving them into his conversation – if he can't have his friend, then he'll make one out of the yellowing, tearing pages and someone else's dreams – and realizes that he doesn't think all too well of Peter Pan for tossing Tinker Bell out on her arse when all she did is try to keep him safe – when everything she did wasn't because she was afraid of Peter leaving her for Wendy, but because she was just afraid of Peter leaving her behind at all.

(And – Lily-bird, he calls her, and no one notices – Lily-bird, he says, and wishes he had Lost Boys to fool.)

And one day James comes in to tell him _I dunno why you hate her _and _what's she ever done _and, God, even _I love her, Padfoot _– and Sirius isn't surprised that he's noticed, no, he's just surprised it took so long. Has he really been trying to hide it? (Nope.)

He looks James firmly in the face when he's finished and says "You silly _ass_," then falls back on his bed, feeling willfully, spitefully clever when he recalls his best friend's bemused, pained expression.

(And the worst part, the worst, _worst_ part, comes later, years later, when the book is still under the mattress at Hogwarts, dog-eared, battered and forgotten, and he's learned to laugh about _JamesandLily, _and he's fallen in love with his godson, and he still calls her Lily-bird but with the edges filed off and the lightest sparkle of pixie dust at the end-

The worst, worst part comes when - suddenly - it comes time for him to stand between Peter Pan and the cup, and Sirius finds himself

too slow, to too small, too _stupid_

to save him

And there's no applause, none at all, because that's when he remembers, dazedly, painfully, that – that

Peter Pan lives forever, but Tinker Bell dies forgotten.)


End file.
